Sheridan Taylor Gibler Jr. (born May 21, 1970), known professionally as Taylor Sheridan, is an American writer, producer, director, and actor. He is best known as the co-creator of the television series Yellowstone and creator of its prequels 1883 (2021) and 1923 (2022).
Sheridan has written several films, including the screenplay for Sicario (2015), for which he was nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Hell or High Water (2016), which was nominated for three other Oscars, including Best Picture. Sheridan also wrote and directed the 2017 neo-Western crime film Wind River and wrote the 2018 sequel to Sicario.
Sheridan got his start portraying Danny Boyd in Veronica Mars (2005–2007) as well as portraying David Hale in the FX television series Sons of Anarchy. He has since created several series for Paramount+, including the crime thriller Mayor of Kingstown, the crime drama Tulsa King (which he co-writes with Terence Winter), the espionage thriller Lioness and the drama Landman.
In 2021, Sheridan was inducted into the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame. In 2024, Sheridan was inducted into the Texas Business Hall of Fame. He is an honorary graduate of Texas Christian University. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate by Texas State University.
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Early life and education
Sheridan was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Several news articles have reported that he grew up on a ranch in Cranfills Gap, Texas, but he was raised in Fort Worth, Texas, the son of a cardiologist. His cowboy identity comes from his mother, who was originally from Waco and loved visiting her grandparents' ranch in that area. When Sheridan was eight years old, his mother insisted on buying a ranch in Cranfills Gap so that her children would "learn firsthand about the peaceful feeling of freedom in nature". Sheridan learned how to be a cowboy during his family's frequent visits to the Cranfills Gap ranch when he was growing up in the late 1980s. Meanwhile, he attended and graduated from R. L. Paschal High School, where he was "the rare weekend wrangler who was also a theater kid".
Sheridan attended Louisiana State University in the fall of 1987 where he was a member of Kappa Sigma Fraternity before transferring to Texas State University as a Theater Arts major but dropped out after his junior year. He later moved to Austin, where he supported himself by mowing lawns and painting houses. While looking for jobs in a shopping mall, Sheridan met a talent scout, who offered him the chance to go to Chicago and pursue an acting career. He later lived in New York City and Los Angeles during his time as an actor.
Career
Sheridan began his career in acting, appearing in small films and in recurring roles in television series like Veronica Mars, Walker, Texas Ranger and most notably, as David Hale in Sons of Anarchy. He made the transition into screenwriting after he turned 40. His first film as a screenwriter was Sicario, directed by Denis Villeneuve. It revolves around Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), an FBI agent who is enlisted to a government task force to bring down the leader of a powerful and brutal Mexican drug cartel. It also starred Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro. The film received critical acclaim, with a 92% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and received a number of nominations, including a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay for Sheridan.
Sheridan wrote Comancheria after Sicario. Comancheria sold first but was stuck in development for quite a few years, appearing on the Black List survey of most liked screenplays not yet produced in 2012. It was later retitled Hell or High Water and was released in August 2016, starring Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine and Ben Foster, and again received critical acclaim. For his screenplay, Sheridan received a large amount of awards attention, earning BAFTA, Golden Globe Award, and Academy Award nominations.
The low-budget horror film Vile is credited as Sheridan's first film, but he does not consider the film his directorial debut, stating in a 2017 Rotten Tomatoes interview:
I would say this [Wind River] is my feature debut. A friend of mine raised – I don't know what he raised – 20 grand or something, and cast his buddies, and wrote this bad horror movie, that I told him not to direct. He was going to direct it and produce it, and he started and freaked out, and called and said, "Can you help me?" I said, "Yeah, I'll try."
I kind of kept the ship pointed straight, and they went off and edited, and did what they did. I think it's generous to call me the director. I think he was try [sic] to say thank you, in some way. It was an excellent opportunity to point a camera and learn some lessons that actually benefited me on Wind River.
His second feature as director, and third as screenwriter, Wind River, starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2017. The film follows an FBI agent (Olsen) and a veteran game tracker (Renner) investigating a murder that occurred on a Native American reservation. The Weinstein Company had acquired the distribution rights during the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, but dropped the film prior to the Sundance premiere. However, the company later finalized its deal to distribute it. Wind River was widely released in the United States on August 18, 2017, following a brief limited release. Following Sicario and Hell or High Water, Wind River is the third installment of Sheridan's trilogy of "the modern-day American frontier".
Style
As an actor, Sheridan explained that the amount of expositional dialogue he read for television caused him to form an "allergy to exposition" in his writing. He has also said that he looks for "absurdly simple" plots to focus solely on character. He has cited the Coen brothers, Cormac McCarthy, and Larry McMurtry as influential to his writing.
Sheridan's popular TV shows such as Landman have widely been described as "conservative", "red-state entertainment" and "Make America Great Again propaganda". Sheridan has publicly contested these characterizations of his style noting in an interview with the The Atlantic "I just sit back laughing. I’m like, ‘Really?". Critics note a more complex blend of some progressive and traditional conservative themes in his shows.
Personal life
Sheridan has been married to actress and model Nicole Muirbrook since 2013. The pair have a son. They currently reside in Weatherford, Texas.
In May 2021, a buyer group represented by Sheridan purchased the 350,000-acre 6666 Ranch in west Texas. In 2025, Sheridan bought Cattlemen's Steak House in Fort Worth, Texas, with two business partners.
